Umberto Eco on why Europe matters

[statsman]

On the rare occasions that I've started a thread in the past, I've tried to write a longish OP putting forward an case.

This time is different; I just wanted to point people towards this interesting interview with the Italian intellectual and novelist Umberto Eco:

Umberto Eco: 'It's culture, not war, that cements European identity' | World news | guardian.co.uk

One quote to give you a taster, talking about the technical governments in Italy and Greece:

How should I have responded? By saying that ours is a government approved by parliament and proposed by a president elected by parliament? By saying that in all democracies there are unelected institutions, such as the Queen of England, and the American supreme court, but that no one defines them as non-democratic?

[Al.]

Neither the Queen of England nor the US Supreme Court hold the kind of power that the unelected, unaccountable technocrats in the EU hold; nor are there checks and balances to hold back their undue exercise of power, and there is certainly no recourse for the public to stop that power from being abused. False comparison.

[He3]

On the rare occasions that I've started a thread in the past, I've tried to write a longish OP putting forward an case.

This time is different; I just wanted to point people towards this interesting interview with the Italian intellectual and novelist Umberto Eco:

Umberto Eco: 'It's culture, not war, that cements European identity' | World news | guardian.co.uk

One quote to give you a taster, talking about the technical governments in Italy and Greece:

We should also ask why do European bankers and their funders matter more than other Europeans.

[Diawlbach]

Neither the Queen of England nor the US Supreme Court hold the kind of power that the unelected, unaccountable technocrats in the EU hold; nor are there checks and balances to hold back their undue exercise of power, and there is certainly no recourse for the public to stop that power from being abused. False comparison.

Emmm... Certainly, in the case SCOTUS, yes, they do. And yes, there are those checks and balances - which, btw, is in origin an American phrase originating from the interaction of the executive, Congress and SCOTUS. And yes, there is recourse by way of changing the US Constitution. It's an entirely valid comparison. And that's ever before you get into prerogative powers of the Crown in the UK.

[statsman]

Neither the Queen of England nor the US Supreme Court hold the kind of power that the unelected, unaccountable technocrats in the EU hold; nor are there checks and balances to hold back their undue exercise of power, and there is certainly no recourse for the public to stop that power from being abused. False comparison.

It's not a perfect comparison, but I think it holds, particularly in the context of being quizzed by an English interviewer on the democratic merits of democratic institutions.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

Neither the Queen of England nor the US Supreme Court hold the kind of power that the unelected, unaccountable technocrats in the EU hold; nor are there checks and balances to hold back their undue exercise of power, and there is certainly no recourse for the public to stop that power from being abused. False comparison.

[Ulster-Lad]

To be nice about it Europe suffers from a Democratic Deficit.

[statsman]

Godwin strikes early.

[Astral Peaks]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

"You are better than this, posting almost nothing but trite photos and drawings, why not engage in written debate?"

[SideysGhost]

False comparison.

It's become axiomatic at this stage that if a Euroweenie said it, it is therefore somewhere on the scale from deliberately obfuscatory to downright mendacious malignancy - or in the vernacular: a dirty big stinking lie.

They seem pathologically incapable of honesty. You would wonder just what it is they are so desperate to conceal with untruths.